She's the Man (2006)

I’m a little speechless after this one. Don’t you remember seeing this trailer and feeling so uncomfortable? That’s what the whole movie is like. She’s the Man is based on Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, but not really. I mean, I doubt Shakespeare thought his name would be on a movie where people in drag put tampons in their noses. But I’m not an English major.

The terrible premise: Viola (Amanda Bynes) goes undercover as her twin brother Sebastian to join the boy’s soccer team, and falls in love with Duke, her male roommate. So basically it’s a remake of Boys Don’t Cry.

Among other things, She’s the Man suffers from being fundamentally dishonest: Amanda Bynes is, in fact, not the man. She’s not any man that has ever existed, because her impersonation of a man is so weird and spastic, you would think she had never interacted with a man before. Viola breaks character at the drop of a fucking hat, and covers by lowering her voice and croaking, “Dude, man, bro, etc.” For god’s sake, she has a twin brother -- shouldn’t she have some idea what the male version of herself would act like?

Somehow, everyone on campus immediately buys that Viola is a man. If I saw this creature stumbling down the hall of my dormitory, I would call the police and tell them a butch lesbian on heroin was lurking in the boy’s locker room. None of these guys think she’s a butch lesbian -- they think “Sebastian” is a ladies man, even though she “accidentally” tells Duke that he’s hot, ogles him in the locker room, and caresses his ass while they’re hugging. And Duke is never as upset by these things as he should be. Like, after a while, Duke must be gay. Come on.

Also, the whole premise of the movie collapses when it becomes obvious that Viola fucking sucks at soccer. She cooked up this whole plan to prove that she’s good enough to play sports with the boys, but guess what? As I mentioned earlier, she fucking sucks at soccer, so the coach won’t even let her play in “the big game” unless she practices like 20 hours a day. Viola sucks at soccer almost as much as she sucks at being a man, so it’s hard to understand why she’s doing either except that she’s starring in a movie about playing soccer and being a man.

By the way, Amanda Bynes thinks she’s really, really funny. She thinks she is Lucille Ball in this movie. I wrote a note during this movie: “It’s the most acting ever done by a face.” Someone must have told her that more facial expressions equals more comedy, and also that no one can hear you when you make witty asides in response to whatever just happened.” So many “witty” asides, like everyone around her is deaf. This is in addition to her tendency to explicitly state what’s going on in a scene in the middle of the scene.

Recommendation: Okay but secretly though I loved this movie. Just kidding. Or am I?